


Lennon Angst

by Anonymous



Series: Lennon Morillo bonus stories [1]
Category: Have We Met - Fandom
Genre: Angst, Gen, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Introspection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-25
Updated: 2020-03-25
Packaged: 2021-02-28 21:35:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,421
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23314003
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: “I can’t just… explain to you why people sleep, Aristotle.” Lennon said in her own voice, almost whispering as if she was still afraid to wake Daniel, even if she had been trying to do so on purpose earlier. She cleared her throat, and then heightened her voice by a lot. That was Todd’s voice. He sounded scared. “What if… What if Mr. Rose doesn’t wake up?”Set before Ezra’s death.
Series: Lennon Morillo bonus stories [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1848184
Comments: 6
Kudos: 5
Collections: Anonymous





	Lennon Angst

Lennon knew about drugs. She knew them from when she was younger, when her father was still alive and she still hung around that little dead town occasionally. She remembered her father’s friends, men as old as him with the same tanned skin and troubled features, marks on the insides of their elbows and scabs on their hands. When they played cards, their hands would tremble in fear, and when they lost a round their bony fingers would clutch at the soft skin of younger players and beg for their money back, for the five-or-so dollars they had invested in the game, suddenly a lot more meaningful now that they couldn’t use it to buy whatever it was they needed. She was painfully familiar with her grandfather’s trembling hands when he missed out on his morning cigarette. 

But this, this was a bit of uncharted territory, even for her. She had walked in originally because she was going to teach Daniel to bake, her famous marble cake seeming like a good starting point in anyone’s baking career. Really, the only thing differentiating it from a regular cake was using butter instead of oil and splitting the batter in two at one point, mixing cocoa through one half while keeping the other half the way it was. After that, one had to pour them both into a tin simultaneously, and then stir; only two or three times, so the batter wouldn’t mix. That had been the idea, anyways, but when Lennon actually entered his home, Daniel turned out to be fast asleep. 

She’d knocked, at first, softly on the doorpost. Nothing. Then harder, on the table his head rested upon. She’d tapped his shoulder, poked his back, and even pulled at a strand of his hair, which she immediately felt very guilty about. But it was no use. He was dead to the world. Not actually dead- she could hear his soft breathing when she held her own breath, but that was all she was getting. 

A bit dejected, she produced her two frog puppets from her bag, Aristotle and Todd. They were the ones she had been using in her guest lessons about traffic safety at local elementary schools. They held an odd importance to her. In a way, they were everything she was not. They were popular (the kids absolutely adored them, which had been a relief), smart (Aristotle seemed to be the smart one at first, but if you’d just listen to Todd, you’d understand that he was the real brains behind the operation), and they were always together. You never saw shy Todd on his own, but Aristotle didn’t feel secure without his friend by his side either. Lennon slid both of them unto her hands and let them get used to their surroundings. 

She turned both of her hands around slowly, as if the puppets were looking around. Aristotle was the first to focus his eyes on Daniel, then back to Lennon. She turned her fingers around, so Aristotle was giving her a questioning look. “Is he asleep?” 

“Yes.” Lennon said softly. When she was being Aristotle, she lowered her voice just slightly. Aristotle nodded. “Why?” 

“I can’t just… explain to you why people sleep, Aristotle.” Lennon said in her own voice, almost whispering as if she was still afraid to wake Daniel, even if she had been trying to do so on purpose earlier. She cleared her throat, and then heightened her voice by a lot. That was Todd’s voice. He sounded scared. “What if… What if Mr. Rose doesn’t wake up?” 

“Of course he’ll wake up. Of course. Why are you even worried about that? That’s absurd.” Lennon said to her hand. She made Aristotle go over to Todd and give him a hug, the spell seeming to break as soon as her left thumb came in contact with her right hand. She sighed, and lowered both of her hands. She stared at Daniel’s hair, but didn’t dare to try and wake him again, lest he catch her performing a one-man puppet show to an audience of zero. 

Aristotle rose up again, almost without her input. Lennon supposed that was how creative brains worked, just creating things sometimes even when their owner wasn’t there to put it on paper. The frog puppet made its way over to Daniel. It tapped him on the shoulder. If Daniel woke up now, she still had time to pretend she was playing some kind of joke on him. She could hide behind the table, with only her hands above it. She could put on a funny voice and sing a song off-key until Daniel told her to stop. While Aristotle pushed at his shoulder Lennon stared at the table, trying to discern what type of tea had most recently been drank from the cups on top of it. 

Mushroom tea. She had heard chatter about it. It was potent in whatever it did, but she hadn’t dared to ask for more information. Closed her eyes and mouth and scrolled past until it was safe to look again. Mushrooms and tea. LSD, which was apparently great to take just before you drank a slushy. Whether it was mushrooms, or wine, beer or cocaine, it was all the same principle. Take it to hide away for a few hours. Become someone else. Take everything that had been suffocating you, pick it up and put it down miles away. Until you couldn’t even feel it anymore. Those men at her father’s house had done that, They needed to get away from wives and children, from money troubles and general fear of what was about to come. They had gotten away from their lives so often that when they couldn’t they’d have these full-body shivers, signifying the need for one more dose, just one more, c’mon, Lennon, let dad borrow that wallet real quick. Only for a bit. You’ll get it back real soon. Those types of things. 

Daniel was young. Ezra was young, wherever that kid hung out nowadays. They weren’t sick yet, not irreversibly so at least. But there wasn’t much she could do. It was one voice against tens of people having fun and laughing together. One word of warning against ten telling people to wind down and relax. She felt utterly worthless in that moment. There she was, Lennon Morillo, so desperate to make a change in the world yet not actually changing anything. And when she finally got a problem on her hands that she was allowed to fix, the format she chose was puppetry. 

She didn’t know what she could do. No education, nobody during her youth who had told her kids weren’t supposed to be afraid of their own fathers. She almost felt like she’d regressed through the years, a smart-for-her-years teenager replaced by an impossibly worthless adult. The cycle was just going to continue. When she got older, and her friends started to tremble like her father had, she would ignore her gut feeling. She would smile, and ask if they needed anything. She would let them take her wallet, fully aware it would be returned to her empty. She’d let them use her lighter. And she’d smile, and tell jokes. Pull out those puppets from her bag and play a little game. Which puppet is holding the coin. Which puppet is going to pay for your next shot. 

So instead she sat silently for about five more minutes before standing up and walking outside. Right now, she wanted to be where the people were. She wanted to be surrounded by people who were happy and talkative. A bar, maybe. Or the community center. Somewhere nice and busy. People who were asleep were too much right now. Too close to an alternative. In a way, Todd had had a point. Often, when people died, they just stopped waking up one day. It made sense. A lot of time in human lives was spent sleeping, so if you’d have a heart attack or something of the sort at that time, it was solely statistically accurate. Combine that with how people tended not to even wake up during such situations, and it was clear to Lennon. People died in their sleep a lot. People had heart attacks, people choked on their own spit, people suddenly forgot how to breathe. It was normal. The circle of life. But she worked to avoid it anyhow. She didn’t want to find the body of someone close to her. Not again.

**Author's Note:**

> :,,3c 
> 
> pls leave kudos/comment if u enjoyed


End file.
